Nina is a severely injured dog with a devastating wound suffered in an apparent gunshot. (HANDOUT)

Two Manitoba families are clinging to hope that a severely injured dog will recover from a devastating wound suffered in an apparent gunshot.

Since the eight-year-old female Labrador-cross stumbled into Colleen Smith’s yard in Prawda — about a 40-minute drive east of Winnipeg — several days ago with a massive hole below its jaw, she and her family members have been on edge while watching the canine’s health slowly improve at a Beausejour veterinary clinic.

“Both my daughters have been bawling. They’ve been so distraught over the whole thing,” Cheryl Rondeau, Smith’s sister, said over the weekend from her north Winnipeg home. “Other animal clinics didn’t want to take her. They just said, ‘Put her down,’ without even looking at her. But the one in Beausejour agreed to look at the dog.”

While the canine — whose name is Nina — continues to be cared for at Beausejour Animal Hospital, Smith and Rondeau are inviting the public to assist in its recovery by making donations to cover the veterinary bill.

The cost of Nina’s treatment, said Rondeau, climbed to more than $600 after about five days at the clinic and the dog is expected to be there for two or three more weeks.

“We’re getting donations from family and friends. We got a very big donation from a nurse,” said Smith, whose nieces have created an online group called Help Save Nina on Facebook, a social networking website.

The sisters, as well as Rondeau’s daughters Cherisse and Crystal and Smith’s sons Kevin and Kyle, are determined to do what they can for the animal, which had been all but written off by virtually everyone else because of its injury.

After taking the dog in, the family immediately sought help for it. However, Smith and Rondeau said several animal clinics and RCMP advised them to shoot it to put it out of its misery.

Refusing to put the dog down, the sisters — initially suspecting it had suffered its injury in an animal attack — also worked with the Beausejour clinic to use its identification tattoo to locate its owner and learn its registered name. But when contacted in Oakbank, that family showed no interest in claiming her, Rondeau said.

A veterinarian at the Beausejour vet clinic didn’t return a call for comment over the weekend but Rondeau said the clinic suspects the canine was shot.

“They were doing X-rays and found lead from the gun. And you can see a bullet wound on one side of her jaw,” she said, adding Nina has “beaten all the odds” by surviving the grotesque injury and somehow turning up in Prawda, so far from its home.

“The vet doesn’t know if the dog walked from Oakbank to there or if it was dumped off. But she was clearly very underweight. She had been sprayed by skunks, she was wet, she was cold. She had been in a river trying to drink. It’s only in the last two days that she has started taking food.”

Since it was brought to the clinic, the sisters said, the dog has had part of its jaw removed. Still, said Smith, it’s surviving.

“This dog seems to be worth every single penny,” she said. “This dog has a will to live. She has a right to live. We just want to have everything for her.”

Rondeau said the vet is hoping to start a three-step surgery to close the dog’s wound as early as this week.

Anyone who wants to make a donation to help cover Nina’s veterinary costs can contact Cheryl Rondeau at 391-7687 or cheryl_rondeau@hotmail.com, or the Beausejour vet clinic at 1-204-268-2177. Cheques or money orders can be sent to the Beausejour Animal Hospital, P.O. Box 368, Beausejour, Man. R0E 0C0.

Anyone contacting the vet clinic should point out that their donation is for Nina, if they want the funds to go directly to helping the pooch.